Ancient Greek Philosopher Celsus on Early Christians and Esteem For Their Bodies

Turkish Mountain City. The Apostle Paul was from Turkey where several early Christians lived..

“The early Christians were known to have remarkably positive views of the human body. Celsus was a second-century Greek philosopher who wrote the first book against Christianity (it was published around A.D. 178). In it, he called Christians a philosomaton genos, which means a ‘flesh-loving people.’ Celsus was amazed that Christians took their physical existence so seriously that they wanted to take their bodies with them to the afterlife. If we take Celsus’s definition to heart, then Mormonism is the most characteristically Christian movement of all Christian traditions.”

Stephen H. Webb, Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-day Saints (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 148.